FBI Director James Comey said Monday that in hindsight, he would have alerted the Democratic National Committee much earlier about the Russian cyber attack that resulted in the release of internal emails during the Democratic National Convention in August.
Comey’s revelation came during a back and forth with Rep. Will Hurd, R-Texas, toward the end of Monday’s House Intelligence Committee hearing. He told the Texas Republican that had he known more about what took place sooner after the FBI was first notified of the hack in August 2015, “I might have walked over there myself” to tell the group, which was not aware of what took place until June 2016.
“We’d have sent up a much larger flare,” Comey said. “We’d have just kept banging and banging on the door knowing what I know now. We made extensive efforts to notify.”
“I might have walked over there myself knowing what I know now. But I think the efforts we made, that our agents made, were reasonable at the time,” Comey said.
The FBI director reiterated that the FBI did not get full access to the DNC servers to investigate the hack. The DNC hired a private company to investigate the hack, which shared the information with the FBI. Comey said the sharing of information was an “appropriate substitute.”
WikiLeaks released the DNC emails during the August convention. The emails were also a precursor to those released from John Podesta’s private email account in the final weeks prior to the November election.
